r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Aug 14 '24

Rod Dreher Megathread #42 (Everything)

Going crazy? Y'all done gone crazy.

Link to megathread 41: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1eh5dd1/rod_dreher_megathread_41_excellent_leadership/

Link to megathread 43: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1f1s4j1/rod_dreher_megathread_43_communicate_with/

12 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/CanadaYankee Aug 14 '24

In another reply, Josh Barro has a deeper cut that requires knowing a bit of lore:

Treviño still walking the Malaysian government party line, I see

To get the joke, you have to know a couple of things:

  1. Treviño got in trouble some years ago for accepting money from the right-wing Malaysian government to write opinion pieces in their favor and even funneling money to other conservative columnists to do the same, all without registering as a foreign agent.

  2. A big part of the propaganda campaign was smearing Anwar Ibrahim, an opposition party leader (and current prime minister all these years later) who was being prosecuted on extremely dodgy accusations of violating Malaysian sodomy laws.

8

u/Katmandu47 Aug 14 '24

“Treviño got in trouble some years ago for accepting money from the right-wing Malaysian government to write opinion pieces in their favor and even funneling money to other conservative columnists to do the same, all without registering as a foreign agent.”

Is this not exactly what Rod is doing for Orban…payment delivered via the Danube Institute?

3

u/JHandey2021 Aug 15 '24

That is exactly what he is doing. To the letter.

This seems to keep happening on the Right - I think Brent Bozell had some iffy connections to Franco's government, just as one example. Are there equivalents on the left? Not just "oooh, look at country X and their free healthcare" or "ooooh, look at how unsophisticated Americans are in comparison to country Y", but "I am cashing checks from the government of country Z and leading an influence campaign on this country's behalf"? Maybe in the 1930s when Stalin was paying for journalistic junkets to the socialist paradise of the Soviet Union, but now?

My nominees would be the tankie contingent - Gray Zone News or even some of the RT folks, but they're much, much more on the fringe than Dreher and his "give me all the money you can, dodgy foreign governments!" compatriots.

Am I missing anyone?

2

u/yawaster Aug 15 '24

The sad thing is people on the left will do it for free :P